The Centre had a strong presence at this year’s excellent New Horizons conference in Vancouver. Steph, Spencer and Luke all presented breaking data (see below) and Spencer scooped the poster prize for the conference with his poster ‘The cost of getting lost: Measuring the slot machine ‘zone’ with attentional tasks’.
We also hosted the second UBC Session e
ntitled ‘Cognitive Distortions and Responsible Gambling Messages’: this session was a panel discussion structured around some video footage that we had prepared on 4 of the cardinal psychological effects seen in gambling: the gambler’s fallacy, losses disguised as wins, the machine zone, and the illusion of control. You can watch the videos on our Youtube channel here. For the panel, Luke (chair) and Eve Limbrick-Oldfield (Centre for Gambling Research) were joined by Prof. Catherine Winstanley (UBC Psychology) and Nick Richards, the creative force behind the highly successful GameSense brand. There was some media interest in the session, with Luke appearing on the CKNW Lynda Steele show and an interview with Luke ‘Slots put players in the ‘machine zone’ in Vancouver 24 hours.
Steph Chu & Luke Clark: The stopper device and illusory control in modern multi-line slot machines
Spencer Murch & Luke Clark: The cost of getting lost: Measuring the slot machine ‘zone’ with attentional tasks
Caylee-Britt Goshko & Luke Clark: Awareness of physiological arousal in problem gamblers